Conjugal Support, Coping Behaviors, and Psychological Well-Being of the Elderly Spouse

Abstract

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to test a model of the relationships among conjugal support, coping behaviors, and the psychological well-being of elderly spouses. A sample of 135 couples, 65 years old or over, was drawn in a large Canadian metropolitan area. Standardized interviews were conducted by two interviewers randomly assigned to each spouse. Twenty-four months later, 90 of these couples were reinterviewed. Structural equation analyses revealed consistent results for both spouses and model stability over time. One coping behavior-refraining-was found to have a significant direct effect on life satisfaction. Conjugal support influenced life satisfaction both directly and indirectly through reframing. The final model accounts for 38% of the variance in life satisfaction and has a goodness-of-fit index of 0.94. It suggests that a supportive marriage is associated with the use of cognitive restructuring, which is predictive of life satisfaction in marital partners.